The Dictionary of Human Geography

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their livelihoods often depend more on other

economic pursuits. mt

Suggested reading

Galaty and Johnson (1990); Ingold (1980);

Niamir-Fuller (1999).

patenting Patents are a category ofintel-

lectual property rightsdesigned to provide

inventors with legal rights for a fixed period

(usually 20 years) to prevent others from using,

selling or importing their innovations. An appli-

cation for a patent must satisfy a national and/

or international patent office that the invention

described in the application is new, useful and

that its creation involved an inventive step

either beyond the present state of the art or

unobvious to a skilled practitioner.

Overtime,moreandmorethings(e.g.certain

biological materials) have become patentable as

business interests (and especially recently the

life science firms involved in producing medi-

cines) have successfully argued that patents are

essential for their ability to make a return on the

highR&Dinvestment requiredtodiscover,pro-

duce and get regulatory approval for new prod-

ucts. Such an extension is reflected in the

TRIPS (Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual

Property Rights) agreement administered by

the World Trade Organization (WTO) and is

hugely controversial. nb

Suggested reading

Coombe (1998); Parry (2004).

patriarchy A system of social structures and

practices through which men dominate,

oppress and exploit women. A distinction is

made between classic or paternal patriarchy, a

form of household organization in which the

father dominates other members of an

extended kin network (including younger

men) and controls the economic production

of the household, and fraternal patriarchy, in

which men dominate women within civil soci-

ety; the latter provided a key focus for feminist

theorizing and organizing during the 1960s

and 1970s. By the 1980s, the utility of the

concept was in doubt; critics saw it as ahistor-

ical and insensitive to cross-cultural variation.

Efforts to theorize patriarchy in relation to

capitalism seemed to collapse intofunction-

alism, or leave the relations between the two

systems unresolved. And if patriarchy operates

autonomously from capitalist relations, as pos-

ited bydual systems theory, did this not leave

the patriarchal relations of capitalism under-

theorized? In geography, efforts were made by

Foord and Gregson (1986) to resolve these

dilemmas through realism: Walby (1989)

criticized their model for neglecting paid work,

the state and male violence (for other critical

reactions, see gender and Women and

Geography Study Group, 1997), and posited

a dual systems theory of patriarchy at three

levels of abstraction – system, structure and

practice. Patriarchy, according to Walby, is

composed of six structures: the patriarchal

mode of production, male violence, patri-

archal relations in paid work, the state, sexu-

ality and cultural institutions. But in Acker’s

view (1989), the moment of theorizing patri-

archy in this way had passed: the object of

feminism had moved from patriarchy as a sys-

tem to gender relations (and nowheteronor-

mativityand sexual difference: seegender).

Interest had also moved away from delineating

thecause(s)of patriarchal relations to under-

standing the diversity ofeffects.

As early as 1980, Barrett suggested that

patriarchy is better conceived as an adjective

than as a noun. The term is still used as a

noun, but typically in the plural: Grewal and

Kaplan (1994, pp. 17–18) urge the need ‘to

address the concerns of women around the

world in the historicized particularity of their

relationships to multiple patriarchies as well as

to international economic hegemonies’, but

their concern is to compare ‘multiple, overlap-

ping, and discrete oppressions’ and not to

construct ‘a theory of hegemonic oppression

under the unified sign of gender’ (i.e. under

the sign of patriarchy). Post-colonial theory

has alerted feminists to the ways in which

accusations of patriarchal relations among

immigrant groups or in countries in the global

South can be used to discriminatory, colonial

or imperialist ends. The Bush administration’s

justification of the US invasion of Afghanistan

in 2001 – as in part a defence and liberation of

Afghan women – is one example. Young

(2003a) asks Western feminists to consider

how they ‘laid the ground work’ for the suc-

cess of this appeal through their own cam-

paigns against the Taliban and the ‘stance of

protector’ that they sometimes adopt ‘in rela-

tion to. .. women of the world who [Western

women] construct as more dependent or sub-

ordinate’ (p. 3) and more oppressed by patri-

archal relations. gp

Pax Americana Also known as ‘Pox

Americana’, this synonym for american

empire makes parallels with the ancient

Roman Empire to either critically unpack

(e.g. Johnson, 2003a; Foster and McChesney,

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PATENTING